maybee N E W Y O R K

in the stamford mall, shops try unsuccessfully to imitate new york city style.

i would give anything to change this shop's name to " maybee not N E W  Y O R K".

"Abercrombie’s ‘Business Model Now Appears Fully Broken’"

I recently read an interesting article about my part-time employer on The Cut that I couldn't agree with more.

To sum it all up, A&F's is continuing to lose money (for the 21st month in a row!!!) because their clothes are OVERPRICED. Basically, noone can justify spending ridiculous amounts of money on garments whose only discriminating and special quality is that they have the A&F logo on it. Therefore, people are obviously going to places like American Eagle and Hollister which offer at least semi-reasonably priced alternatives in nearly the same exact styles.

The kicker is that this article was published on the 25th and when I was called into work on the 29th, it was because everything in the store had been drastically reduced in price and thus, it was a pig stie. Seems someone at headquarters listened.

reconstructed

i recently inherited a vintage Kenneth Cole black leather briefcase-type bag from the pops. however, the softshell lining wasn't making the cut; i wanted to be able to set the bag on the ground and have it stand on its own two feet. so what to do? one cardboard box and some ingenue later, i slipped a cut out into the lining and sewed it back up. time needed to make this alteration: one hour. cost: 88 cents. bag: free. style: timeless.

quotes of day one

walking past my grandpa reclining on his La-Z-Boy in my worn everyday standard black jeans, i was questioned: "are these the new style these days?" to which i responded, "what do you mean?" you see, he was wearing wide-leg pants and mine obviously weren't, so he couldn't understand it. so i had to explain, "these are just straight-leg jeans, as opposed to yours which are wide-leg." thank goodness i hadn't worn my skinnys.

book review

since returning the nyc, this was the lightest, yet most interesting read i could get my hands on. and i give it a high rating. even for those not typically interested in this subject matter, it will reveal a lot of interesting tidbits that you can promptly use during social gatherings to impress your listener (as i have done).

dana thomas did years of traveling and research to understand how luxury went from locally made paris goods where the demand was larger than the supply to outsourced goods where the supply can quite adequately meet the demand.

she means that we have LVMH, for example, an upwards of a billion dollar earning company per year that is founded on luxury and yet they are supporting brands that make JEANS. since when have jeans been luxurious? so why do luxury brands make them? food for thought.

the most direct and honest answer is for revenue. the luxury industry transformed itself since bernald arnault too the helm of LVMH at the beginning of the 1980s and started to make quick fashion available for the masses. for instance, going to the 5th avenue store was no longer reserved only for society's upper-crust of wealth. indeed, the middle class of america could not be found perusing the goods and at the very least, buying the cheapest items available: leather holders, sunglasses, and the such.

some of my favorite insights from the book were:

1. 40% of LV's customers are japanese. these days, they live at home longer and thus have a much bigger disposable income to spend on luxury goods.

2. an LV sales man in japan sold a discerning japanese woman a dress who promptly brought it back to the store because a thread was hanging out of the seam and as she said, it was therefore "defective." thus, the sales man got the idea to try to sell the same dress to a european, who noticed the thread but shrugged and said, "i can cut it off." the last test was an american, who bought the dress and never even noticed the thread hanging out.

this speaks legions to the japaneses' refinement and taste level. this is precisely why i love them so much.

3. the number one tourist to hawaii is again, the japanese, who buy packaged deals that bus them directly from the airport to the duty free luxury store to search out the goods. the japanese speaking clerks say that they usually search first, eat dinner, and then come back at night and make their purchases.

4. there are luxury-brand freaks in japan. there is one man that stores everything in their original boxes in his apartment and never cooks at home for fear that the smell will seep into the fabric.

5. luxury brand stores in las vegas do a lot of money because it's the one place where people of all classes can go into that kind of store and not worry about being judged, no matter how they look. a clerk at one of the stores said that women who look like complete trash come in and throw down thousands of dollars in cash on luxury goods so there is no way to really pick them out of the crowd.

6. asia is the biggest growing market. luxury stores are opening up in china at an unprecedented rate and by the 2000-teens, they will be the largest consumers of luxury goods.

7. luxury goods secretly or not secretely manufactured in china are sometimes not assembled in the country so that when they are shipped to europe, they can be and thus have the 'made in ______' seal of approval. likewise, brands hide the 'made in china' label inside the good well or put the label on the outside packaging so that again, when it is shipped to europe, the receivers can rip off the label and reattach a new one. because no one wants to buy a luxury good made in china.

8. hermes and chanel are just about the only brands that don't outsource for their bags and no. 5 perfume, respectively. hermes has artisans in france who work on each bag individually from beginning to end as opposed to other brands (whether outsourcing or not) who have instated the assembly line technique. meanwhile, chanel still pays enormous sums to keep local french farmers growing the flowers necessar to concoct their eponymous perfume. so if you want the best of the best, shop from them.

9. in the department store, most sales are made on the first floor. wanna know why? because have you noticed that on the first floor, it's always bags and fragrances and neither are concerned with size. no need to try them on, you can just buy them. also, a fragrance is the gateway product for the middle-class consumer who can afford it but not anything else. not to mention, it's shelf-life is quite long.


interesting, right?

abercrombie & fitch

anyone who knows me even just a little can clearly see i don't fit the a&f image. even if i work there after the store closes and therefore aren't required to meet that standard, i feel totally out of place getting paid by a company i've spent many an hour rolling my eyes over.

but to my surprise, it only took me two days to actually find some apparel that caught my attention - in a good way! however, it's all sitting on the $19.90 clearance table of the women's department. don't get me wrong - i'm not talking about cross dressing here. but if people can feel kinship with clothes, i feel more of it with the women's than the men's. there are a few simple explanations for this.

first of all, a lot of the women's clothes i sorted and folded last night didn't have the typical formula of 'abercrombie' + random years splashed across the front of them in huge, iron-on letters. and they were made of fabrics that were softer to the skin than just a basic cotton tee. lastly, the sizes were more body conscious seeing as how i'll probably never meet my goal of being able to fill out a muscle tee. even if i buy the smallest size muscle tee, it's still clear i don't have any.

the conclusion of all this being that my 30% discount card may get some swipage afterall. who knew?

this still kills me

maybe it's because i'm overseas, but i haven't heard anyone talking about what hillary rodham clinton was wearing for her 2008 DNC speech. personal attire, while not a major factor, does play an important role in the subconcious minds of americans. so with that, i want to ask, what was hillary thinking?

who on earth told her it's okay to wear an all-neon orange pants suit? unless she's going to a rave in which case, she'd be terribly overdressed. here she is, which her much more appropriately dressed daughter.



even if wearing an all-neon orange pants suit is acceptable, only those six feet tall and thin can pull that shiz off. so in a way, this is another good example of why hillary should not have been president. for goodness sake, the world's leaders would show up in washington thinking they were going to a disco party on skates! can you imagine vladmir putin lacing up, playing with glow sticks, and dancing to "Oh! Mickey you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind. Hey Mickey!"? Didn't think so.